The present invention relates to computer-based devices and methods to negotiate and implement security arrangements between two or more Web Services. More particularly, it relates to devices and methods that specify input and output interfaces, compute and generate a security contract consistent with inputs, and implement security in accordance with negotiated security arrangements. Particular aspects of the present invention are described in the claims, specification and drawings.
Business-to-business (B2B) and application-to-application (A2A) electronic commerce are replacing former protocols for electronic data interchange (EDI). As businesses strive to improve their efficiency with B2B and A2A systems, a number of incompatible platforms and competing standards have emerged. Among compatible standards, gaps remain to be filled. For instance, the industry has defined what a simple web service is. Standards related to simple web service include UDDI, WSDL, XSDL and SOAP. However, these standards do not fully meet the security, reliability, manageability, and choreography requirements for practical B2B and A2A electronic commerce. Security in particular presents numerous options and configuration issues. Collaborative web services and their security needs are expected to evolve as non-web businesses do. There is no any comprehensive or unified device or method that dynamically resolves and updates security options and configurations as web services evolve.
There are a number of industry initiatives to extend standards applicable to B2B and A2A electronic commerce. Choreography efforts include ebXML/BPSS from OASIS, WSFL from IBM, and XLANG from Microsoft. Conversation efforts include ebXML/TRP from OASIS and Microsoft's WS-routing. The dominant security effort is WS-security from IBM and Microsoft, there is also a complementary security effort in OASIS called SAML. For reliability, there are proposals from Microsoft, ebXML/TRP from OASIS, and HTTPR from IBM. W3C is addressing standardization in all of these areas. Key industry players have formed a rival consortium called WSI. However, they have not addressed the dynamic security negotiation issue.
Accordingly, an opportunity arises to develop methods and devices that dynamically resolve security option and configuration issues for trading partners.